


I am Not Ready Either

by Sorrel_Oake



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Suicidal Thoughts, The power of friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-19 18:54:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15516342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sorrel_Oake/pseuds/Sorrel_Oake
Summary: Frisk's friends across the Underground wait for the news of their fight with Asgore with baited breath and conflicted hearts.





	I am Not Ready Either

Toriel was startled from her book by the sudden realization that she was no longer alone. “My-- Uh, Mx. Blook? What are you doing here?”  
“... oh. I can… I can leave, I just wanted to tell you… oh, nevermind.” The ghost turned to leave morosely.  
“No, you did not annoy me! You merely startled me, that is all. You said you had news?”  
“oh... well, I just wondered if… well, the little human made it to ASGORE… and I was wondering… if you, like… wanted to listen to the radio… to see what happened… if they’re alright and all… but if you’re busy reading… that’s ok…” They didn’t seem to notice Toriel’s glasses nearly falling off when she started at her ex-husband’s name, but Toriel didn’t know if they were merely pretending not to notice to be polite. The ghost was the only monster in the RUINS who hadn’t gotten the memo to delete that particular name from their vocabulary, but Toriel supposed that was to be expected from someone who lived in Waterfall and occasionally had to deal with politics.  
“No, not at all! I would be delighted to listen with you! You are welcome at any time, of course, and this is of course more important than rereading this silly book about snails. I wish you had phoned ahead--I would of course have prepared you a ghost pie. I am afraid that all the food in my inventory is intended for the living, but I am sure I could prepare you a ghost sandwich.”  
“don’t worry about it… it’s no big deal, really… let me see if I can get you the CORE’s radio station… they’ll probably notice first… I don’t know if metta will report on it… he ran out of battery and I don’t know if he’s been maintenanced yet…”  
Toriel, white-knuckling the book (a trashy romance novel about a snail engaged to a snail at a food farm), walked into the kitchen and used a little bit of magic to get out the ghost cold cuts out of the fridge’s inventory and begin the sandwich. In her living room, Napstablook was fiddling with the antenna on Toriel’s old radio set, fallen sometime in 194X but still serviceable enough for her to huddle around in the evening and listen to her favorite classical music station or the news from Snowdin, which was always late enough that she never had to confirm that any of her children were dead.  
She returned with the sandwich, but as they listened to the latest music and news-on-the-hour from the CORE it sat uneaten as Napstablook enclosed Toriel’s hand in both of their ghostly ones and she tried not to light things on fire in front of her favorite houseguest. Maybe Frisk would escape through the barrier, past him, somehow? If only she were not now too late to rush to New Home and head off their fight herself.

***

Sans was sitting in the snow. This was not precisely a new turn of events, but today he was not even attempting to knock on the old lady’s door. He’d come back here after judging the kid, seeking the kind of solace he couldn’t get from anyone else, but he couldn’t bring himself to knock. What would he say? “heya, so the kid i swore to protect is either gonna kill the king, who i assume is your only hope just like the rest of us, or i fucked up on my promise and they’re gonna get their soul ripped out? also, do you wanna hear a joke from a book i found at the dump?”  
The door was firm against his spine, a change from his preferred spot on a lumpy sofa or squashy armchair, and though the cold didn’t bother him, the bottoms of his basketball shorts were getting soaked where it melted under him. He watched teens playing in a clearing a ways off, through the dark forest, and he knew that Alphys’ camera was watching him, but he couldn’t focus on them.  
One of the kids from town came down the little-used path to the door and he barely bothered to put his eye-lights back on before they wandered close enough to see him. They were clearly beat up about something, and not just physically in that they sported two black eyes and two scraped knees. No, the little tyke looked wise beyond their years--or maybe just lonely in a way Sans could tell was beyond the look of a kid whose friends didn’t come out to play.  
“heya, kid. what’cha doin’ all the way out here?”  
“Oh! Mister Sans! Hello! Yo, is your brother around anywhere?”  
“nah, he went to waterfall for the day. how’d you even find this place?”  
“I dunno. I’m really not doing so well, Mister Sans. I had to leave my friend outside Hotland, and I’m worried they’re gonna die.”  
“now why would a kid like you be worried about something horrible like that?” Sans asked, already knowing the answer. He didn’t remember the kiddo being friends with Monster Kid, but maybe he had snuck out into Waterfall like he liked to do.  
“Well, uh, it’s kind of a secret, Mister Sans.”  
“i’m not gonna tell anybody, kiddo. i’d take your secret to my grave, but bein’ a skeleton, i’m a ways past needing one of those.” come on, sans, what was that? He thought, but the kid laughed all the same.  
“Okay, so, my friend, they’re a human. But not like a bad human! They’re really nice and they care about us a lot. But they wanna go home, and Undyne said they would have to get past Mister King Asgore, and nobody can do that! Only Undyne can beat Mister King Asgore in a fight, and that’s because she can beat anybody! But my friend probably can’t beat him, and I don’t want Mister King Asgore to kill them, but he’s probably gonna do it to get their SOUL. And I know it’s important to go to the surface, but I don’t want them to die! And they’ve got, like, parents, and probably friends on the surface, and maybe they’ve got, like, a pet rock! Is Mister King Asgore going to kill the humans’ pets too? Because wouldn’t they like the humans, even though humans are supposed to be kind of gross?”  
Sans shut his eye-sockets. The kid was talking his ear canal off! “well, i dunno what they’re gonna do. i saw them in the king’s cathedral, and they looked pretty determined, but i dunno if they’ll pull through. but i’m here for you kid. c’mere, look at this.” He pulled out a hotcat from behind Monster Kid’s ear and held it up for them to take a bite, but they just shook their head sadly.  
“I’m not hungry, Mister Sans. And my HP’s just fine. I just don’t wanna stay with my folks and have them cheer when they hear the news.”  
“welp, more for me.” Sans devoured the hotcat, even though he was on maximum HP (although he supposed if he only ate when he needed the HP boost he’d starve with his full single HP) and sighed. “don’t worry about me, kiddo. take all the time you need. the human’s my friend too, i guess, and i suppose that’s how i’ve been feeling too. heh, you know yourself pretty well, kid. if i knew myself half so well i’d be screaming twenty-four/seven, so good on ya.”

***

Undyne was absolutely NOT planning on dissecting ANY of her emotions, thank you very much. She’d broken Papyrus’ phone on accident around fifteen minutes after Alphys had rang her outside the CORE to say they were going in, and her TV when that fucking animated calculator betrayed Alphys, just like she’d warned her, and the radio when the MTT news started offering a play-by-play for those in the RUINS that informed her that the bitch-ass rolling hunk of trash had hurt her friend so badly that they were barely holding on, but still posing desperately to try and get support from his parasitic hangers-on. She nearly broke Sans when he came in to say that he had judged them and hadn’t even done that no-eyes “bad time” thing he kept threatening to dissuade them from keeping going.  
Papyrus was on her stove, the last working appliance in her house, making some excellent pasta. His form was on point--he was slamming the pot around, gripping the noodles so hard they shattered, and he had turned her ceiling vegetables into such a fine paste that it had formed a river in the bottom of the canyon that was once her cabinets. The hot fridge, which he had been using to heat the sauce, was busted at the back where he’d thrust the pot in too hard.  
All in all, it was a sort of sorry sight--her bedroom was intact thanks to to Alphys’ invention of the fireproof door, but everything but the stove and her grand piano were in ruins. That was alright--it looked lived-in, and the flames were out except for in the windows and the door, where the MTT brand paint on the windows and door frame Alphys had gotten for free was somehow still burning. She got in and out through the window Papyrus had smashed now, but she would probably head back to Snowdin if Asgore…  
Dammit. This house was full of memories of him, Asgore with his beard full of marshmallows, Asgore wailing on her training dummy with his trident to show her how to maximize damage on a slash, Asgore drinking tea, Asgore’s big paws over her hands on her piano keys, Asgore singing along to his theme song when she played it, Asgore telling her about Asriel and Chara, Asgore having a panic attack in her bedroom during the Royal Guard Gyftmas Party, Asgore reading her stories in bed when she lost her eye, Asgore eating dinner with her to gauge Papyrus’ cooking, Asgore whittling stim toys for her so she could sit for military theory lessons, Asgore calling her to ask whether she thought he should expand the garden, Asgore staying at her house after visiting Gerson… Frisk had better not kill him.  
Alphys was so silent when she asked her whether they might be able to call them on the other side of the barrier. Uncharacteristically silent. Papyrus said the little punk’s soul was obviously strong enough to cross and cited his very strange notes about them from their… date? Undyne mentally slammed that into the list of things she didn’t want to know about. But as the night wound on past sunset into moonrise and midnight, Papyrus had fallen silent and started cooking more and more vigorously. He had completely stopped speaking at 12:32 by Undyne’s watch, and Undyne thought she heard the handle of the pot crumple under his iron grip.  
Would she be okay without Asgore? Would Papyrus be okay without their new friend? Would she be okay without Papyrus? Without the little punk? Would Alphys be alright? Would Sans, as much as she hated him, be alright? The little punk with no arms who always showed up to her fights? The Snowdin Canine Unit? They all needed each other so much…  
Undyne grabbed her spear and stabbed the wall in frustration. No more thinking!

***

Alphys regretted everything. She was crying at her desk, Mettaton’s busted EX torso propping up her laptop with the feed from the SOUL containers. Metta himself was out of the form entirely, using his ghost form while the repairs happened.  
She was probably never going to repair it. When Asgore killed the human, there would be no reason to let her keep the lab. The Amalgamates would have to go free, and it would be better if she disappeared when they did.  
She withdrew the bottle of painkillers from her inventory, looked at it, and kicked it across the floor in a moment of willpower, but the sound of barking downstairs brought her to the floor and she scrabbled for it under the desk. This time, she was going to put it in her phone’s box, but that just made her think of holding the human’s phone, putting all those dishonest little gimmicks on it, and the jetpack could probably have gotten them killed… _I truly am disgusting_ , she thought. Her phone rang in her hands. Undyne. Tears came unbidden from her eyes and slid down her scales. Don’t do this to me, Undyne. You don’t know what I’ve done, and you wouldn’t call me again if I told you.  
Her claws shook and she shoved the bottle back into her inventory. She knew that if she answered, Undyne would hear her crying and tell her she was worth love, and she’d probably realize that she was thinking of finally killing herself, and she might even think she had to come over, and Hotland was so bad for her. She looked at the decline button for a long moment, then pulled out her chainsaw for Mettaton’s repairs and trashed the whole phone. The noise rang off the tiles then was silent.  
The laptop ticked away another second of normal functioning on the SOUL containers.  
What would she do if Frisk killed him? Could she be mad at them? What would she need to do to keep Undyne safe? She would have to ask Metta to ask Napstablook to ask the Queen to return, or Undyne might be pushed into ruling, into vendettas, into knowing exactly what she did and killing her for her crimes. At least the queen was a wildcard. Undyne, she knew, would kill her, either on the spot or because at last nobody would call her and interrupt her suicide.  
Mettaton chose that moment to glide in through the floor and find her shaking, chainsaw in one hand, the other shaking, tears streaming down her face. She forced the chainsaw into her inventory and turned to him.  
“Alphysy, darling, what’s wrong?”  
Alphys shook her head. Words didn’t come to her, and she wrapped her arms around herself and rocked.  
“Oh, Alphysy, this won’t do. Come on, darling, let’s get you cleaned up. You’re not hurt, are you?”  
He *CHECKED her quickly to see her HP, and only once he was satisfied that she had full HP did he float back to give her space.  
“Come here, sweetheart. I’ll get you some water to drink, and you wash your face, and then we’ll get you changed into your pyjamas and we’ll put up work for today and just watch some of your anime.”  
Alphys shook her head vehemently and tapped out IT’S THE HUMAN in binary with one claw on Mettaton EX’s torso.  
“Oh, dear, well, there’s nothing you can do right now. Nothing any of us can do right now. They’re such a strong kid, I know they’ll go far…” Mettaton trailed off, seemingly realizing that that would entail Asgore’s death. “Uh… well, anyway. We can’t leave you like this. You’re in no shape to deal with anything that happens right now. Alphysy, please, come let me pamper you for this evening.”  
At last, Alphys’ shoulders dropped and she relented, knowing nothing she could do would dissuade Mettaton. He began to glide away towards her fridge to bring her a cup of water, then, a thought striking him, turned back.  
“Alphysy, your inventory. Open it up.” His tone brooked no argument and she was too exhausted to resist. She let him take away the painkillers, the claw file, and her pen and paper she’d prepared to write the note, and followed him emptily to the fridge. As he promised, he fetched her water, had her wash her face and change clothes, and then they sat on her bed and he possessed her comforter to give her a hug.  
“Metta, why don’t you j-just go away and--and let me do it? Y-you’re a b-big star now, and there’s, there’s probably someone else w-who can fix your body. It’s n-n-not a b-big deal to you anyway if the h-human wins or l-loses, so why--why aren’t you out there celebrating? Y-you could, you could find a p-party and, and, and--”  
“Sshhh. Alphysy, I’m here because I love you. You’re practically my mom. I want you to be happy. Celebrating and replacing my body aren’t important, darling. You are.”

***

And before the barrier, Frisk died and died and died and every time got back up and refused to leave their friends or kill the king. One time, they would succeed, and they knew their friends underground could finally be… like a family.


End file.
